IT Strategic Architect

The IT Strategic Architect provides enterprise-wide architectural leadership to support the company's ongoing transformation. Acting as a senior technical advisor to the CIO with delegated execution authority, this role is responsible for shaping, governing, and enabling the evolution of IT architecture across infrastructure, cloud services, identity, data, integrations, and application modernization. The IT Strategic Architect drives alignment of technology initiatives with enterprise strategy, ensures adherence to architectural standards, and promotes disciplined coherent execution.

Job Responsibilities

• Partner with the CIO to define, rationalize, evolve, and maintain the strategic architecture vision, principles, and roadmap across short- and long-term horizons.
• Provide architectural leadership, governance, and oversight for major transformation initiatives to ensure alignment with enterprise strategy, standards, and timelines, identifying dependencies, risks, and integration impacts across IT ecosystems.
• Act with delegated authority from the CIO to review and refine technical decisions, resolve architectural conflicts, and ensure operational excellence.
• Provide leadership, mentoring, cross-team facilitation, education, and development to others.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, platforms, and vendor solutions; synthesize recommendations and trade-offs for CIO review and IT leadership decision-making.
• Establish, maintain, and enforce strategic architecture standards, reference architectures, design patterns, and performance metrics.
• Ensure architectural work products (e.g., models, standards, roadmaps) are appropriately scoped, documented, and maintained.
• Promote architectural discipline, reuse, and sustainability while enabling agility and innovation.
• Prepare ROI evaluations, investment planning, and cost optimization analysis.
• Drives execution of architectural outcomes through IT teams and delivery partners rather than as a delivery owner and ensures objectives are met.

Qualifications/Requirements

• Proven experience in enterprise or senior solution architecture roles within complex IT environments.
• Demonstrated ability to design and govern architecture across multiple domains, including infrastructure, cloud platforms, identity, data, integrations, and applications.
• Strong research and advisory ability to objectively evaluate technologies and vendors and deliver clear recommendations and decision briefs to executive and technical audiences.
• Comfortable co-creating strategy with CIO level, objectively weighing options, tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations with ability to adapt recommendations based on executive guidance.
• Strong understanding of modern IT architectures, including cloud-native services, hybrid environments, APIs, integration patterns, and enterprise platforms.
• Experience leading architecture in transformation initiatives or large-scale modernization efforts with cross-functional teams, systems integrators, vendors, and providers.
• Strong collaboration and influencing skills, with the ability to work effectively across leadership, delivery teams, and vendors.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms, identity & access architecture, enterprise integration, enterprise data architecture concepts with the ability to vet and challenge vendor recommendations.
• Experience in operationally complex environments.
• Familiarity with strategic architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) and modeling practices.
• Experience establishing or maturing strategic architecture governance, standards, and capabilities.
• Background in infrastructure, cloud, or application architecture with demonstrated cross-domain leadership.
• Experience executing and managing long-horizon multi-step strategies across interdependent systems and services at varying points in their lifecycle.
• Developed strategic and systems thinking.
• Architectural governance and decision-making.
• Executive communication.
• Collaboration and influence of working groups without direct authority.
• Pragmatic balancing of standards, innovation, and delivery realities.
• BS in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or closely related discipline or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years progressive experience in IT, including Enterprise Architecture, Solution Architecture, Platform or infrastructure Architecture, and Large-scale systems integration.
• 5+ years operating at a senior cross-domain architecture level.
• Proven experience as technical advisor to executive leadership, and as a design authority within cross-functional matrix.
• Helpful certifications include TOGAF, CEA, OCI, Azure.

Cianbro is an employee-owned, tobacco-free, equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate based on marital status, race, color, creed, gender, sex, religion, national origin, gender identity, age, veteran status, union affiliation, physical or mental disability, citizenship status, sexual orientation, genetic information, or other legally protected status.

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